Known Devil

by Matthew Hughes

  “Hemoglobin-Plus, according to the elf.”

  “Plus what?”

  “That’s the mystery, or one of them. It must be something pretty potent, since hemoglobin all by itself isn’t addictive to anybody.”

  “Well, it is to me,” she said.

  “Fuck that. You’re talking about nourishment, honey. Calling blood addictive to vampires is like saying humans are addicted to food. I mean, in a literal sense I guess that’s true – without it, we’d die.”

  “The ultimate withdrawal pang.”

  “It’s still not the same,” I said.

  She laughed softly.

  I looked at her. “What?”

  “Stan Markowski, once the scourge of the undead from Scranton to Shickshinny, defending vampirism. There was a time when you didn’t talk like that.”

  I turned my head and looked out at the night that was pressing against the window. “There was a time when I didn’t know better.”

  After finishing my eggs, I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d ask around the… community about this HG shit when you have a chance.”

  “I’ll be happy to,” she said. “But if somebody’s actually using this stuff, it’s pretty unlikely they’re gonna just admit it – at least to me.”

  “Maybe not, but it could be somebody heard about another vampire getting hooked on this stuff. You know people like to gossip.”

  “And vampires, like corporations, are people, too,” she said, giving me a toothy smile.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but a lot more talkative.”

  On the way to work, I passed a couple of new billboards that had gone up just since yesterday. One said “SLATTERY FOR MAYOR” and, underneath that, “The man for REAL change.” Three blocks farther on, another billboard reminded me that six of the eight people sitting on the City Council were up for reelection this year, too. But the ad wasn’t paid for by them, even though they were shown in it. The faces of all six were lined up in a row, each with a red X across it. Below that, in big red letters, it said, “THROW THE BUMS OUT!”

  I thought that was strange, since I was pretty sure that four of the councilors running for re-election were Democrats and the other two were Republicans. Who would call members of their own party bums?

  Then I got a little closer and saw the smaller print saying that the billboard was brought to us courtesy of the fine folks at the Patriot Party. Now it made sense.

  The Patriot Party didn’t like anybody – except for fellow Patriots, that is. They were new on the local scene, and while I don’t usually pay much attention to politics, I knew that the Patriot Party combined fiscal conservatism with a social agenda that some people found kind of disturbing. They were backing Philip Slattery for the mayor’s seat, and supporting a whole slate of candidates for City Council.

  Everybody wants lower taxes, including me. That’s just what the Patriots promised – I think they wanted to cut the property tax rate in half. That would make a lot of people happy, but the big drop in revenue which would require serious cuts in city services.

  The Patriots were fine with that, especially if the services that got cut involved poor people, unwed mothers, or people with substance abuse problems. Supporters of the Patriot Party apparently believed that poor people deserved to be poor, unwed mothers were sluts, and drunks and druggies had brought their problems on themselves and shouldn’t expect taxpayers to help them cope.

  The Patriots also weren’t real fond of gays, and they were especially down on supes. Their members contained quite a few Bible-thumpers, who had declared supes to be “abominations before the Lord”. They usually accompanied this claim with a bunch of quotes from the Old Testament – like the one from Exodus that says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

  But some other members of the Patriot Party made a more legalistic argument. They said that a “citizen” was defined someplace as “a man or woman living under a particular legal jurisdiction”. Since supes weren’t human, their argument went, they couldn’t be considered citizens and therefore had no basis to claim civil rights.

  I wondered if that meant supes didn’t have to pay taxes, either. Karl and Christine would love that part of the program, if not the rest of it.

  The PP seemed to have money to spare, considering how many billboards and commercials they’d bought. There was even a Super PAC, the Coalition for American Morality or something, that was running TV and radio ads in support of the Patriots, and putting out some other ads that said some real nasty things about Mayor D’Agostino and the incumbent City Council members.

  Fucking politicians.

  When I got to the squad room, Karl wasn’t at his desk. That was unusual, since he usually gets in before I do. Then I saw him standing in the doorway of McGuire’s office, talking to the boss. Karl looked my way for a moment and I heard him tell McGuire, “Here he is.” Then he closed McGuire’s door and headed my way, walking fast.

  When he reached me I asked, “Something up?”

  “Not much – just a war. Come on, let’s go.”

  House of God.

  That’s what they call it – the Catholics do, anyway. Considering how many churches there are around the world, God’s got more houses than Donald Trump.

  St. Mark’s Church towered over its South Side neighborhood like a skyscraper over a bunch of mud huts. As usual, God had used an architect who thought big and liked stone.

  I wondered if He’d looked out the front window recently. Was He pissed that a little piece of Hell had been left within a hundred feet of His front door? Could be that He was amused. They say that God created everything – and I guess that means He made irony, too.

  Karl and I made our slow way down the middle of the street, trying not to step in any of the blood. At least we didn’t have to worry about traffic, since both ends of the block were closed off by police barriers. Behind the yellow sawhorses, reporters screamed for access, forensic techs waited impatiently, and neighbors just stared in shock and disbelief. It was a typical crime scene – even if this particular crime was anything but typical.

  Even though it had been dark for hours, everybody could still get a good look at the carnage. The forensics people had set up enough lights for a film set. Difference was, these actors weren’t getting up for another take, no matter who yelled “Action!”

  I looked over my shoulder and said quietly to Karl, “You doing OK?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I had something before coming on shift.”

  I’d been a concerned that he might be feeling edgy. Some vampires get that way in the presence of a lot of fresh blood – although Karl was used to it. He’d been to a lot of crime scenes.

  Our slow progress eventually brought us to the tall man in the black raincoat. He stood, hands in his coat pockets, staring at one of the bodies as if he was trying to memorize it. He didn’t look up as we approached. Lieutenants don’t have to show up at crime scenes, but Scanlon does anyway. I think he likes it.

  “Evening, Scanlon.” He outranks me but doesn’t act like it, usually. I used to work Homicide, and even though I’ve been in Occult Crimes for years, we still run into each other at crime scenes – especially those with a body count as high as this one.

  Scanlon slowly turned toward me. “Stan.” He looked over my shoulder, nodded, and said, “Karl.”

  “Lieutenant.” Karl doesn’t have the long history with Scanlon that I do, so he keeps it formal, usually.

  I made a gesture with my chin toward one of the bodies. “They all vampires?”

  “That’s what my guys tell me. Once I noticed one body had fangs, I had them check all the others.”

  “No wood, though,” Karl said. “Did you notice?”

  We both looked at him. “No arrows,” Karl said, “or crossbow bolts, or any of the other things most people use to kill the bloodsucking undead at night, when they’re not lying helpless.”

  They, I noticed, not we. But the way he’d said “bloodsucking undead” showed th
at he wasn’t completely indifferent to what had happened. Karl’s what you might call conflicted.

  “Silver bullets for all of them, you figure?” I said.

  “That, or maybe charcoal,” Scanlon said. “We had a guy use a charcoal slug on a vampire last year, remember?”

  “Forensics will tell us about the bullets,” I said. “But there’s something else I noticed.”

  Now I was the focus of attention.

  “A couple of them are lying on their backs, and I recognize the faces,” I said. “Both members of the Calabrese Family.”

  Scanlon made a disgusted sound. “Fangsters. Jesus.”

  “Looks like somebody set up an ambush with the Calabrese guys as the guests of honor,” I said. “They got hurt pretty bad tonight.”

  “It wasn’t a shutout, though,” Karl said.

  I turned toward him. “What?”

  “One of these dead guys is wearing thin latex gloves,” he said.

  “Paranoid about leaving his prints?” Scanlon said.

  “Could be,” Karl said. “Or maybe he was part of the ambush and figured he’d have to reload eventually.” Karl made a grimace that briefly displayed his fangs. “The bloodsucking undead don’t handle silver bullets too well.”

  Scanlon looked from Karl to me. “Vampires… ambushing vampires?”

  “Makes a certain amount of sense,” I said. “Word on the street these last few weeks is that a gang from out of town had its eyes on the Calabrese territory. I figured if the rumors were true, it was only a matter of time before the new guys tried what you might call a hostile takeover.”

  Scanlon’s head did a slow pan, taking in the crime scene and the six dead men it contained, all of whom had probably died tonight for the second time.

  “A vampire gang war,” he said. “Just what we fucking need.”

  I shrugged. “Could be worse.”

  He looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Yeah? How?”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  Back in the car, Karl said, “Looks like the new kids in the neighborhood don’t play nice.”

  “No, but they’re playing to win,” I said. “A couple more nights like tonight, and Calabrese is gonna start running out of soldiers.”

  “You heard anything about where these new guys’re from?”

  “Nothing I’m willing to put any faith in,” I said. “One guy I talked to last week said he thought it was Philly – but it turns out that it was something he got from his cousin, who heard it from some other guy, who was banging a girl who once knew somebody who lived in Philly. Or something like that. You know how it goes.”

  “Confidential informants – you gotta love ’em,” Karl said.

  “Not when they only have shit to tell me, I don’t. If we’re gonna find out what’s going on, we better get a little closer to the source.”

  “So, we going to see Calabrese?”

  I thought about that. “No, not tonight. After what happened to his crew, he’ll be hiding out for a while.”

  “Hiding out?” Karl showed his fangs in a grin. “Don Pietro Calabrese, capo di tutti vampiri, hiding from his enemies like a rabbit cowering in his hole? Say it ain’t so, Stan.”

  “That’s not what Calabrese will call it,” I said. “He’ll say he’s gathering his forces, or planning strategy, or maybe even going to the fucking mattresses. Do wiseguys still say that?”

  “Beats me,” he said. “All I know about the Mafia, I learned from Francis Ford Coppola. If I wanted to mess around with those guys, I’d be in Organized Crime.”

  “Well, since Calabrese is likely to be unavailable for a while,” I said, “we oughta pay a call on Victor Castle.”

  Although Pietro Calabrese was the Godfather of the local vampire “family”, the wizard Victor Castle was the unofficial head of the city’s whole supernatural community. I was never clear on exactly how he got the job – was there an election, or a vicious power struggle, or did Castle simply have better magic than anybody else who wanted the job?

  Before Castle, the position of local “supefather” had been held for a long time by an old vampire/wizard named Vollman. But he’d died last year, at the hands of his own son.

  Victor Castle has a lot of business interests in town, but he usually hangs out at the rug store he owns on the west side. Like a lot of businesses, Magic Carpets, Mystic Rugs was usually open at night, catering to customers who didn’t come out during daylight hours.

  When we walked into the store, Castle greeted us himself instead of sending one of his flunkies. Apart from the expensive suit he wore, the man who’d come into this world as Vittorio Castellino didn’t look much like the big deal he apparently was. Average height or a little less, bit of a gut on him, and a lot of bald scalp glistening in the overhead lights.

  Castle never seemed to know what to do with his hands. As we approached, he was fiddling with the large gold signet ring he wore on his right pinky finger. I never knew whether the ring was some kind of badge of office or just something that Castle wore as a complement to his thousand-dollar suits.

  “Sergeant Markowski,” Castle said. “Good evening.” He turned to Karl and with a slight nod said, “Detective.” There was usually a hint of tension between those two, and most of it originated with Karl. My partner was a vampire, but he was a cop first. I figured Karl was reluctant to pay homage to a guy who he might have to arrest someday.

  Castle studied us for a couple of seconds, turning the ring around and around. Then he said, “Why don’t we talk in my office?”

  Castle’s inner sanctum was done in dark wood, including a huge desk that looked like it might have been real mahogany. Rugs, rolled up and tied tight, were standing in three of the corners, and fabric samples of different sizes were tacked to each of the walls. Larger carpet samples, about a foot square, were stacked all around the room.

  Despite the general sloppiness of the office, Castle’s desk was nearly immaculate. All that rested on it were a fancy-looking clock encased in Lucite, a closed ledger, and one of those Tiffany-style desk lamps that provided the only light in the room.

  A couple of comfortable-looking chairs faced the desk, and Castle gestured for us to sit down. Then he plopped into his leather desk chair and said, “And what can I do for the Occult Crime Unit this evening?”

  It’s been well established that human pupils dilate in response to sudden emotional change, and I was watching Castle’s eyes closely as I said, “It’s about HG.”

  All that got me was a frown of perplexity that might even have been genuine. His pupils didn’t change at all.

  “Since you seem intent on being mysterious,” Castle said, “I’ll have to ask you what HG refers to, Sergeant.”

  “It’s the street name for a new drug,” Karl told him. “It’s short for ‘Hemoglobin-Plus’.”

  Castle’s heavy eyebrows nearly came together as he frowned. “Plus what?”

  “That’s the secret ingredient,” I said. “At least, it’s a secret for now. I take it all this is news to you.”

  “You’re quite correct,” Castle said. “But why are you asking me about some street drug? Humans become addicted to such things, not supernaturals – well apart from those degenerate goblins, and I think we’ve just about got that under control now.”

  “That’s what we used to think, too,” I told him. “But the evidence of our own eyes, along with a couple of interrogations, says that at least one species of supernatural is capable of getting hooked on the stuff.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Castle said, the way you do when humoring somebody. He was looking at me as if I’d just told him that I’d seen a six-foot cockroach walking down Mulberry Street, wearing an evening gown and playing the bagpipes.

  Castle’s gaze went to Karl – maybe to check whether he was smiling at what might be a tall tale. “What species are we talking about, exactly?”

  “Elves,” Karl said. “Two that we know about for sure, anyway.” />
  We told Castle about how our coffee break the night before had been rudely interrupted by two elves packing heat, and what followed afterward. It took a while.

  When Karl and I were done, there was a silence in the room so total that I could hear the electric clock on the desk ticking. Finally, Castle said, “I can think of no reason why the two of you would concoct a story like that. So I am inclined to take your account at face value.”

  “That’s good to hear,” I said. “I’d hate to think we’ve been wasting our time – not to mention yours.”

  “We’re not kidding around,” Karl said. “You’re right that we’ve got no reason to do that. But if it was all a big joke, I’d say you haven’t heard the punch line yet.”

  “Really?” Castle looked like a man who was developing a bad headache. “Then by all means deliver it, Detective.”

  Karl leaned forward a little. “There’s an unconfirmed report that at least one vampire is hooked on the stuff, too.”

  Castle just looked at him. “Cross-species addiction,” he said softly. Then in a normal voice, he told us, “I was about to say, as a reflex, that such a thing is impossible. But then, until a few minutes ago, I would have held that drug-addicted elves were an impossibility, too.” It looked like Castle’s headache had taken a turn for the worse.

  He sat there for a little while, staring at the banker’s lamp and drumming his fingers softly on the desk. Then, without taking his eyes off the lamp, he said, “What you’ve said concerns me on two different levels. One is the idea of a drug-addicted supernatural species other than goblins. My second concern is that until you officers told me, I had heard absolutely nothing about this.”

  “Could be that none of the junkies have been driven to crime before,” I said. “Last night could’ve been the first time – hell, it must have been, otherwise I would’ve heard something.”

  “You don’t understand, Sergeant,” Castle said. “It doesn’t matter whether last night’s incident was the first or the hundredth. If elves are getting addicted to this ‘HG’, then I should have known about it before it resulted in armed robbery. I am supposed to know – I am boyar.”